Online Video Ads Reached More Americans in July, but Total Views Leveled Off

Online video ad views have been increasing at a torrid pace through the first half of this year. However, as was the case last year, the start of the summer seems to have leveled that growth off. During July, Americans watched 19.6 billion online video ads, representing a slight 2.4% dip from June’s record 20.1 billion views. While that’s much less of a slowdown as last year’s 12.7% drop-off in July, it does bring to an end 6 consecutive months of growth.

Despite the slowdown in ad views in July, they still totaled more than double the number from January (9.1 billion), underscoring just how quickly impressions have grown this year.

Interestingly, online video ad reach took a step forward in July, increasing to 55.4% of the US population from 53.6% in June. The slight decline in total online video ad views was entirely the result of a drop-off in ad frequency, with the average viewer seeing 114 ads during the month, compared to 121 in June.

Google remained the top online video ad property in July, serving almost 3.4 billion ads. BrightRoll moved into the second position (2.1 billion), followed by ADAP.TV (2.1 billion) and LiVERAIL (1.8 billion). It will be interesting to see how Facebook measures up with its video ads: it certainly has extensive reach.

For the month of July, Facebook was the second-largest online video content property by total unique viewers, boasting 61.3 million, according to comScore’s figures, relatively unchanged from June. Google Sites again had the highest number of unique viewers (167.9 million), with AOL (#3; 57.9 million), VEVO (#4; 49.6 million), and Microsoft Sites (#5; 49.6 million) rounding out the top 5.

Overall, comScore’s data indicates that 86.6% of online Americans watched video content in July, with the total number of videos viewed climbing to 48.5 billion from 44 billion in June. The duration of the average content video was 5.2 minutes, with the average online video ad lasting 24 seconds.

Other Findings:

Among the top 10 video content properties, Google Sites generated the highest engagement, at an average of 544 minutes per viewer during the month. NDN was next at 92.3 minutes per viewer.

The average online video viewer spent about 22.6 hours watching video content during the month.

VEVO retained its top spot in the YouTube partner rankings, followed by FullScreen and Maker Studios.